Fangirl Friday: On Carrie Fisher and the House of Organa

Hi, all.

I had a whole different Fangirl Friday planned out, but as you know, events kicked that to the curb and instead I wanted to pay a bit of homage to Carrie Fisher, who died Tuesday at the age of 60 following a heart attack on a Friday flight from London to LA. And in a cruel twist of fate, Fisher’s mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, died at 84 of a stroke the day after losing Carrie.

I just saw Star Wars: Rogue One a couple of weeks ago, and it serves as a prequel to Star Wars: A New Hope (episode IV, for you fanfolk), which debuted on the big screen in 1977, and introduced us to one of the most iconic characters in fandom, Princess Leia Organa, as portrayed by Carrie Fisher. Rogue One had me jonesing to see New Hope again because it answers all the questions you might’ve had about how the rebels acquired the plans to the Death Star, and the origin of this weakness that we find out about. It also leaves off right before New Hope starts, basically, so it’s almost a seamless transition in the story.

So I did. I watched New Hope again (I seriously cannot count how many times I’ve seen this movie), which means I was already thinking about Carrie Fisher when I heard the news about her heart attack.

She had just released her latest book, The Princess Diarist, which is based on the journals she kept while working on the set of New Hope, and from reports, she had been working on some projects in London and was about to announce another project. Those of us who have followed her career know that she was much more than an actress. She was also a writer/screenwriter and sought-after script doctor. Those are the people who go through a movie script and tighten it, punch up dialogue, polish a character, and add elements that serve to strengthen the story. She may have started doing this with the original Star Wars movies when she was in her early 20s, because she had an ear for dialogue.

She also had a knack for capturing the pathos and foibles of humanity with a sharp wit tempered with genuine warmth, and for honesty in discussing her battles with addiction, depression, and a bipolar diagnosis. Fisher was talking openly about her struggles decades ago, when the stigma associated with them was stronger than it is now, and because of her willingness to be that person to do it, many national dialogues started and I don’t think I’m remiss in saying that her willingness to be open about her own issues gave a lot of people the courage to be open, too, and to demand appropriate care, and to push caregivers and doctors to really start incorporating better ways of addressing mental health in their practices.

So as an adult, I knew Carrie and her work within those parameters, though the formative infrastructure of my thoughts of her turned on the rebel princess kicking ass and taking names. It’s to that Carrie I now turn.

I was a ‘tween when New Hope debuted in theaters in late May of 1977, and within days of its release, it was apparent that something special — something amazing — was happening. The lines were incredible. People went to see it once then went several times more (I was one of them), dressing in costumes from the film. The fandom expanded until there was nobody in the country, it seemed, who didn’t know about Star Wars or Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, or Darth Vader. And it played a significant role in the childhoods of millions of American youth. To this day, I vividly remember the theater in which I first saw New Hope, and the crowds, and the then-amazing special effects on the big screen.

To those of us of the generation that saw it when it debuted on the big screen, there’s a special kind of camaraderie, and many of us point to that as the movie that intrinsically changed something within us. Especially those of us who are geeks, outsiders, and nerds; those of us who read sci fi by the truckload, and dreamed of adventuring in other galaxies. That’s the soil in which fandom takes root — the imaginations of kids who look beyond the world around them and instead of asking “why,” they ask, “why not?”

But there’s another layer, here.

For those of us who grew up as little girls, steeped in a gendered culture in which we were (and still are) expected to fall in line and do what we’re told, Princess Leia flipped a switch in a lot of us. That character (Fisher was 19 when she auditioned; here’s her audition tape) was a princess, yes, but she was full of fire, full of piss and vinegar. She snarked, stood her ground, handled a blaster, and took on the mission of saving the rebellion. She owned the screen every time she was on it, tapping into the veins of thousands of young women like me aching for media representation beyond the strict gendered binary that we knew was bullshit but we didn’t quite understand how to dismantle.

I think I may have developed my lifelong crush on Princess Leia when she was brought to Governor Tarkin after Vader and his forces board her cruiser in a search for the stolen plans of the Death Star. She’s captured and brought to him and acknowledges Tarkin, saying, “Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.”

Oh, SNAP. OMG. I was in her minions for life at that point. But it only got better.

In this scene of New Hope, Luke, Han, and Chewie have infiltrated the Death Star and located Princess Leia in one of the detention areas. Unfortunately, things don’t go as Luke and Solo wanted, and under fire from stormtroopers, Leia snarks, “some rescue” then commandeers Luke’s blaster and shoots a hole in the wall. “What are you doing?” Solo demands and Leia just looks at him and says, “Somebody’s gotta save our skins. Into the garbage chute, fly boy.” ::mic drop::

That dialogue part starts about about 4.30:

Leia took control of the situation, without fanfare, without fuss, in the midst of a firefight, and joined Luke, Chewie, and Han in the garbage chute they dove into after she blasted a hole in the wall. She worked with them to stop the walls from closing in. “Don’t just stand there,” she orders. “Try and brace it with something.” And she starts to pick up some of the debris then orders Solo to help her (starts about 3 minutes in):

Later on, she and Luke are seemingly trapped at an uncrossable gap in the Death Star. It’s Leia who closes the door to block off one entrance and give them some time. And if you watch, even though she sounds worried, she’s looking around, trying to find a way out. Luke then gets his little rope thingie ready so they can swing to the other side, and he hands his blaster to Leia and says, “Here. Hold this.” And as he fiddles with his tool belt, she starts blasting stormtroopers on the opposite side. And she’s a pretty good shot.

This was 1977, friends. Princess Leia was something nobody really saw much in media then. A strong woman with a take-no-shit attitude who put her money where her mouth was. It was transformative, to watch a woman on the screen doing those things.

Star Wars entered the cultural zeitgeist at a time when this country needed heroes, I suppose. Post-Vietnam, searching for a national identity, it seemed that Star Wars may have filled part of the quest. It’s an obvious space opera — that is, it’s apparent who the bad guys are and who the good ones are. You’ve got the scrappy rebels triumphing over the creeping, scary evil of the Empire. At least temporarily. Good overcomes evil. It’s a timeless story, and in this case, it captured the hearts and souls of thousands of people.

Princess Leia, wearing the costume indicative of the frozen rebel base on Hoth in the Empire Strikes Back (source)

And right in the middle of it was this scrappy, snarky young woman who did, in fact, give new hope to thousands of young girls like me — the ones who didn’t quite fit, who didn’t believe what society told us about what girls and women could and couldn’t do, who were hungry for representation indicative of that.

Princess Leia gave that to us.

I don’t think Carrie realized it at the time, the impact that kind of representation can have.

Later on, I came to see Carrie Fisher outside the Leia-sphere, and as I got older, I came to appreciate all the other things that she was engaged in. She was, in a weird way, a long-distance mentor of sorts, unafraid to bare her soul, unafraid to be kind, unafraid to share her observations of the world and herself and in some ways, that, too, entered the cultural zeitgeist and though I may not have made the connection directly to Fisher during my own struggles with depression, I know that it felt right to be open about them, and that it was okay to have those struggles and it was okay to talk about them. I think Fisher made it okay for a lot of people to do that, and that she helped shift the national mindset on how we think about and deal with mental health issues.

I got the news that she didn’t survive the heart attack she’d had a few days prior when the plane I was on landed after a long flight. Someone had texted me with the news, because they knew I would want to know. I remember standing in the plane’s aisle, getting ready to exit. I stared at the text and said “damn it” loud enough that several people turned to look at me, concerned. I didn’t say anything else, but the people in front of me were talking to their kids, roughly aged 8 and 11, and one — the girl — said, “Princess Leia died?” and she had this expression of confusion and disbelief because what the hell, Princess Leia doesn’t do things like that. She saves rebellions. She becomes a general. She takes down Death Stars. She doesn’t freaking die.

General Leia Organa, from 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I got off the plane, numb in some ways, trying to process. I had known there was probably a good chance Carrie wouldn’t live, but I still had hope, and I had been holding on to it. I walked through several concourses to catch a connecting flight and I had some time. I sat down at one of those bland airport tables set out near a few chain food franchises and I stared at the article on my phone about Fisher’s death and the life she had lived and I cried. I grieved the young woman who portrayed a badass princess during my childhood and I mourned the woman she became and the things she had managed to change.

But as I boarded my next flight, I thought about what that ‘tween girl had said on the plane and I realized that no, Princess Leia does not die. She never will, because I carry her within, as do thousands of other women from my generation and those after who watched her and realized that they, too, could rescue themselves, could be their own advocates, and could damn well lead a rebellion and take down a Death Star.

That will always be part of Carrie Fisher’s legacy, as much as her sarcastic wit tempered with kindness, her unapologetic brashness, her quick turns of phrase, her staunch advocacy for myriad causes.

I thank her for all of it. And may The Force be with her and with all of us.

This Tweet went viral after the death of David Bowie earlier this year. It resurfaced with Fisher’s death.

16 thoughts on “Fangirl Friday: On Carrie Fisher and the House of Organa”

I was stunned when I heard the news, and I too had the thought that Princess Leia does NOT die. She just can’t! It’s like Wonder Woman or Xena dying! It just DOESN’T happen.
Sigh
Thank you for an excellent post, even if it did make me cry all over again.

I too was a tween as well as a budding feminist when Star Wars came out. Princess Leia was a wonderful embodiment of who I wanted to be when I grew up. She became my role model again with her honesty about her struggles with addiction which I share.
Thank you for the wonder post.

Damn. Just damn. I, too with a million other fans, share the bipolar experience with Carrie Fisher and processed her death through my relationship with her as a mental health advocate and role model. But the feminist, ass-kicking, name-taking, empire-destroying inner princess didn’t connect Princess Leia’s death until she read this article. Your writing, damn it, is so good. (I am a writer and cannot turn off my inner writing-assessor.) Both made me cry, the writing and the realization. Thank you for framing this potentially heartbreaking, day wrecking news in a hopeful way. Or as hopeful as the death of a fine woman can be. Truly worthy of a Light Saber Salute.

When I heard the news I, weirdly, calculated that for 75% of my life Princess Leia has been in it. And, of course, that doesn’t change. The flip side is that I have had a fan relationship with Carrie for that same period. As I approach another birthday in a week, the percentage of my life without Leia will grow increasingly smaller, but the percentage without Carrie, who has had such an impact on women’s lives from work to health, will grow increasing larger now. And that made me sad.

I wasn’t quite old enough to see any of the OT in the theater the first time, I was 3 when ROTJ was released, but for as long as I can remember I have loved Star Wars. I’ve watched the movies so many times I couldn’t keep count. The movies sparked my imagination in a way I will always be thankful for and of course as a little girl Princess Leia was my hero. I love all of the characters, especially R2-D2, but Princess Leia was a hero to me in a way none of the rest of them could be. As I child I fell in love with Carrie Fisher and never looked back. It’s only been strengthened over the years as I learned more about her as a person and not just as Princess Leia. Getting to meet her at a convention once is one of the best moments of my life. I don’t have a diagnosed mental illness but I was a teenage girl who lost her mother and then 7 years later lost her grandmother and her openness about her mental illness helped me deal with those losses, and the grief and depression that comes with them, in the way that worked best for me and showed me it was okay to feel how I felt and that I shouldn’t feel bad or pressured when people told me to move on or to let it go. She taught me that my way of dealing with things was perfectly fine and I wasn’t broken or damaged for not being the exact same person I was before.

Last Friday when the news broke about her heart attack, I was stunned, especially since we lost Kenny Baker earlier in the year. I thought surely 2016 couldn’t be heartless enough to take away R2 and our Princess in the same year? I spent the entire holiday weekend obsessively watching for any news on Carrie, after bursting into tears at the final scene of Rogue One during my 2nd viewing of the movie on Saturday morning. Reading the accounts from people on the flight I knew that if she did wake up there was a strong chance she wouldn’t be the same Carrie, I knew her fans would love her any way, but I hoped and prayed that she would make it through and be the Carrie Fisher we all loved again. By the time Tuesday rolled around I had more hope for that outcome than I had all weekend, then I sat down to start watching a Netflix show I haven’t caught up on yet before going to work and my phone started going crazy with Twitter notifications. It was oddly enough, Anna Kendrick who broke the news to me with her tweet and like her I was heartbroken. I turned the TV off, and sat on the floor of my room and cried for 2 hours. I’ve spent every day since crying every time a new touching tweet came across my twitter feed or a new story about the influence of Carrie Fisher popped up. I cried even more on Wednesday when I saw that Debbie Reynolds was rushed to the hospital with a stroke and when the news came out she had died as well, I just knew it was truly a broken heart that killed her and I cried again. I can’t imagine the heart break Billie has gone through this week.

Since Tuesday, I’ve been re-watching the OT and TFA trying to get to the point that I don’t start crying over Carrie during the movies. I haven’t reached that point yet and it honestly may never be possible. I’m crying now as I write this. Carrie Fisher will always be our princess, our senator, our general and an all around bad ass lady. She will be sorely missed and the world is a poorer and darker place without her and Debbie in it.

Carrie and Leia. They were inextricably intwined. Both badasses with sharp tongues and a penchant for telling the truth, even when the truth hurt. The garbage chute scene in Star Wars was always my favorite. That was the kind of woman I wanted to be. Not a damsel in distress but a rescuer, a hero, who got to shoot guns and get dirty. When I got older, I idolized Carrie Fisher as a writer. Her words were sharp and honest and vulnerable. They made me laugh and cry, all at the same time. If you want to learn how to write memoir, read Carrie Fisher. She was the best.

So eloquent as always and you summed up everything I have been thinking and feeling. I have never forgotten the day I lined up in 1977 to see what would become a phenomenon.. Carrie Fisher was The Force!

[…] Also, in case you didn’t realize, I do a Fangirl Friday blog over there almost every Friday about what I’m fangirling over, so if that’s up your ally, give it a whirl. This past Friday’s was my thoughts about Carrie Fisher. […]